Use Images, Animations and Models to Illustrate an Estuarine Principle or Concept

Visualizing an estuary, its processes, and changes over time is key to helping explain the functioning of an estuarine system. Use these visualizations - animations, maps, images, diagrams and others - to represent, explain ideas and explore data.

Animation of salt marsh environment during tidal cycle showing low, medium, and high tidal regions as well as vertical and horizontal distribution of flora.

NOAA's National Ocean Service (NOS), Education

View the distribution of blue crab in different salinity zones of an estuary during each stage of its life cycle. [link]

Salinity/adaptation/blue crabs

Blue crabs are mobile predators whose salinity requirements change at different stages in their lives.

NOAA's National Ocean Service (NOS), Education

View an animation of secci disk dissappearing in water due to turbidity. [link]

Turbidity/monitoring

Turbidity is essentially a measurement of how cloudy or clear the water is, or, in other words, how easily light can be transmitted through it. The animation represents the idea that the cloudier the water, the greater the turbidity.

NOAA's National Ocean Service (NOS), Education

View an animation of a "parcel of water" as its pH changes from acidic to alkaline. [link]

ph/monitoring

Knowledge of pH is important because most aquatic organisms are adapted to live in solutions with a pH between 5.0 and 9.0. This animation shows a "parcel of water" as the pH changes from acidic to alkaline.

NOAA's National Ocean Service (NOS), Education

Examine this animation representing what happens when the concentration of microscopic green algae, and therefore chlorophyll, increases in a body of water. [link]

Chlorophyll/monitoring

Chlorophyll is a green pigment in plants that turns light energy into food and allows plants to grow, and releases oxygen in a process called photosynthesis.This animation represents what happens when the concentration of microscopic green algae, and therefore chlorophyll, increases in a body of water.

NOAA's National Ocean Service (NOS), Education

Most of these visualizations were developed in collaboration with NOAA's National Ocean Service (NOS), Education and NOAA's National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Services, unless otherwise noted. Special thanks go to Bruce Moravich (NOS) and Dan Pisut (NESDIS) for supporting our efforts in advancing understanding about estuarine systems.